And Then One Day You'll Find 10 Years Have Got Behind You...

Ten years. This site is now officially ten years old.

It's difficult to put into words, the experiences I've had these last 10 years. What a journey it's been. A journey that, for all practical purposes, began with selfish intentions.

You see, back in the early-to-mid-1990s I had a feeling that my love for my Cougars wasn't unique, but I didn't really have the means to express this feeling or to find others that felt the same way. Everything Internet was relatively new. My life was virtual chaos: job situation, housing situation, relationship situation. The only things in the last 20 years that have been absolutely rock solid have been my cars. They were always there for me, and even when they temporarily let me down (repairs) they still gave a feeling of solidity that, quite frankly, a lot of humans still cannot do.

About this time the convertible wove its way into the fabric of my life. This car is something that I'd wanted more than life itself--and being a very practical person by nature, that said quite a lot. The car wasn't quite the be-all, end-all of my existence but it was pretty close. Looking back I can say that it was at this point where my life's path took a change.

I began to wonder again about how I could communicate my feelings and passion with others. My original intention was solely to find other Fox Cougar convertible owners. Never did it occur to me that regular, plain ol' Cougar owners would enter the picture. Again, it was rather selfish and I am quite embarassed to even admit that in public like this. It was very shortsighted of me, for sure. But it ended up having an unintentional payoff.

My brother's friend was a computer geek who happened to mention to me that he had Microsoft FrontPage installed on his PC. Now my formal graphic training and my college degree pretty much demanded that I use Macintosh computers for production. I'm not avert to trying another operating system or computer, though. So when this friend told me about this, the wheels started turning: here was my opportunity to create a website where, hopefully, eventually, I can find another convertible owner. All I had to do was figure out how to operate Windows 95 on someone else's computer, and learn HTML. Piece of cake, right?

The initial site layout was ugly. Very, very embarassing. Instinctively I knew what I wanted, though. I backwards-engineered the layout using HTML code from sites that I'd liked, whipped up some initial graphics using Photoshop, assembled the whole thing, figured out hyperlinking, and then...a big, whopping nothing. I had no server and no domain name. I didn't even know what to call the site. One day the name "COOL CATS" just hit me. I cannot say why but it did succinctly describe what I wanted to convey: that the site was specifically for Cougars, and that if you have one, you're automatically cool with me.

With a site name, a basic layout and a lot of hope the initial site was launched on December 23, 1997 to relatively small fanfare. It was with good fortune that I had been chatting with a few people via IMs and e-mails. These are people I had found online by chance, as they also owned Cougars or Thunderbirds. The new site was essentially preaching to them for a month or so, at least until Yahoo! recognized the site as legitimate and began to catalogue it. But it was unleashed nonetheless, and life would not be the same for me again.

The hosting issue was a problem, though. Guess I didn't realize how much space the graphics would take up. Oddly enough, my ISP at the time (the dreaded AOL) had just expanded the amount of web hosting space that each screen name was allowed to have. Yes, it was a whopping 2MB per screen name. I created my maximum limit of 5 screen names and connected the site to all of them. When visiting the initial version of COOL CATS, you literally jumped around to 5 web hosting spaces! Fortunately I found a dedicated hosting company not long afterwards and moved the site there. The domain for "coolcats.com" was taken a mere two weeks before I went to get it (it had been open the last time I'd checked) so I opted for the more obscure but different .net version. Remember that domain names had just dropped to $70 US/year so it was an expensive proposition.

So there I sat. No job, no income, the wedding called off, having to grovel to my parents to let me live with them until my life got back on track. Scraping for cash was an understatement. Quite literally it was the lowest point of my life. But I had a car and a website, dammit! There had to be some glimmer of hope; now all I needed was some kind of break.

And then I started to get e-mails from people, total stangers finding the site on search engines, about their cars. It became very clear in a short amount of time that, indeed, my instincts were correct: I was not alone in my love for the Cougar. In fact, a few people seemed to be even more fanatic about them than I was. But the point had been made: THEY had found my site. And from that point forward I made an effort to ensure that each response was genuine and personal. I wished to establish a precedent that, no matter how large the site ever would become, there was a real human being behind the keyboard that indeed shared the same passion for these cars.

Eventually I did get my life back into order. After freelancing for a company for almost a year, they finally hired me in as a full-time employee. The income was very welcome. There was a setback with my health that resulted in several years' worth of medical bills, and of course this happened immediately after my hire, when the company insurance plan hadn't quite kicked in. There went all my plans for the car. But I was alive and back to normal in short order, so I had to focus on being thankful. The plans for the car would have to wait. Instead I focused upon site upgrades during the recovery period, short- and long-term goals. The mail still kept rolling in. And yes, I did get to hear from a few convertible owners.

The message board concept was brought up, and by the late 1990s they had become stable enough to actually be useful. I'm proud to have had a hand in setting up one of the first message boards dedicated to these cars. People flocked in from all corners, willing to share their experiences, ask for help, even contribute. These Cougar lovers were beginning to build a dedicated community online and we're proud to say that they're still thriving now.

By 2002 there was enough interest to create an all-Cougar/Thunderbird national car show. Really the show, dubbed Cat Jam, is the culmination of everything I'd ever wanted: meeting people online, then meeting them in person, and of course getting to see their cars also. Long ago it was just a dream that I'd had, that somehow, someday, there would be a car show for just us, nobody else invited, since we always seemed to be the oddball cars at other shows. Now not only is it a reality but it continues to thrive every year. I'm still amazed at how far people are willing to drive to be with other Cougar lovers.

In the present day now, I think back to the people that I've talked to over the last decade of the site's existence. Not necessarily the sheer volume of mail, but their points of origin, has left me awestruck. It's rather humbling to realize that people from all over the world have sent me messages. I'm still in shock whenever I hear from my friend in Russia. Russia! I was alive to see the Berlin Wall come down...never did I imagine that there would be a Cougar lover in the former Soviet Union. Then was Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, England, Poland, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, virtually all habitable provinces of Canada, Mexico, and of course every state in the U.S. When you stop to reflect upon this, it's simply amazing to see just how far these cars have gone in the world from their point of origin a mere 70 miles from where I live. So I like to think that every time I've received an e-mail from somebody about their car, it's been sort of like a homecoming for them.

Some of these people have become good friends, possibly for life. The fact that our friendships started with a simple e-mail, then IM's, then phone calls, then meeting in person, then gathering every year, all because of love for these cars, is pretty incredible to me. I'm profoundly humbled to have so many good friends.

More importantly, though, I have learned my place in society because of this site. I've learned to temper my feelings, to be more mindful of others and their opinions, to do the right thing, to share what I know without regret, and--possibly the most valuable--to be willing to learn and accept knowledge from others. I have learned so much because of other people sharing what they know. There were things that I never knew, things that I had always thought to be correct and ended up being wrong, things that I just perceived one way when in reality they were another. This has definitely made me change my life and my view of things for the better.

I hope that, as a viewer of this site, you've learned a few things here and there over the last decade. I for one am gracious that you've set aside a little time in your life for this humble little website, and hope that I can learn as much from you as you have learned from me.

Again I renew my commitment to you, the viewer, to keep the content of this site fresh and relevant, to continue to provide access to necessary information, and to do all of this without ever trying to dig into your wallet. The site was built upon the principle that we, as human beings, have the obligation to pass on our knowledge without ever demanding any compensation in return. The Internet has become the perfect medium to perpetuate the spirit of free information exchange. Of course there have been sacrifices along the way to ensure that things continue to operate as-is but I will always continue to make sure that those sacrifices never become your problem.

You are the reason this site exists. It is not my site anymore; I am just the conveyor of its contents. Just as Cat Jam is not my car show...I simply provide a place for it to exist. Without you, neither is relevant. I cannot express more my heartfelt thanks for making dreams a reality, for continuing to support the site and show, and for showing me how to live a good life and be a better person.

Although we all love the cars for our own reasons, it is the people that make them worth celebrating. Never forget that.

Here's looking forward to another 10 years and all the adventures to come.

Cheers.

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